What began with reading a magazine article about piloting an airplane along what it known as the Appalachian Trail, ended up being six-month long endurance self test for Albany native Joe Upchurch.
Hiking the more than 2,100 miles of what is known as the Appalachian Trail is attempted by more than 3,000 people annually, according to the website for the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, the entity that is charged with the task to protect, manage, and advocate for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.
Upchurch has remained active and physically fit throughout his life, which included being raised on a farm in the Cartwright Community, operated by his parents, the late Jimmy Foxx and June Upchurch, along with his older brother, the late Jim Upchurch.
After graduating from Clinton County High School in 1983, Upchurch left Albany for college and after graduating, headed to the Ft. Lauderdale, Florida, area to join his brother, Jim, on a business venture that resulted in a professional adult career in the restaurant business.
“Right out of college, I got into the restaurant business in Florida.  Jim had lucked out and gotten in with a group of guys who were smart businessmen, and they loved Jim,” Upchurch said one morning recently during a conversation in the kitchen of the home which he grew up in the Cartwright Community of central Clinton County.
It was at the urging of his older brother that Joe Upchurch decided to join him on this new venture that ended up being a world-wide known restaurant and entertainment franchise.
“When I got out of college, Jim said to me ‘I think we’ve got something good here’ and so I went down and got involved with the business,” he said. “At that time it was just a Hooters franchise and then over the years, we got into multiple different concepts, none as good as Hooters, but quite a few different concepts.”
While Joe Upchurch has traveled extensively across the world, traveling over 2,200 miles through the wilderness, on foot no less, wasn’t necessarily on his “bucket list” of things to accomplish in life.
A pilot, Upchurch said he first became interested in the Appalachian Trail after reading an article in a magazine he subscribes to for aircraft enthusiasts, that featured a fly-over trip .
“It’s hard to explain.  About five years ago, me and my girlfriend at the time flew the Appalachian Trail,” He said during a recent interview with Clinton County News Publisher Al Gibson at his home in the Cartwright Community. “I get a pilot magazine and one issue had an article about flying the Appalachian Trail, so we did that.”
Upchurch said that trip involved flying into small airports near towns and communities along the trail, and doing short, day-hikes along portions of the trail.
“We started in Georgia and we would just fly into these little airports and a lot of times they would give you a car to drive or you could rent a car or sometimes just UBER from the airport to a trail head,” he explained.”We went all the way up to Rangeley, Maine, and we had a blast.”
He said that before reading that magazine article, he had never really thought about an adventure like this at all but he couldn’t seem to get the idea off of his mind.
No stranger to endurance tests, Upchurch said he completed the New York Marathon in 2000, but he wasn’t sure if he would be up to the challenge of a six month hike and the 2,300 mile trek that would cover all possible types of difficult terrain.
In January of this year, he decided to give it a try.
“I was just amazed at those people out there doing this, I had never really thought about it that much,” he remembered. “Then it got on my mind that I wonder if I could do it.  I wondered if I was still tough enough to do it. So I decided sometime in January, that I was going to do it.”
The Appalachian National Scenic Trail is the longest hiking-only footpath in the world, measuring 2,197.4 miles in length in 2023, and travels through fourteen states along the crests and valleys of the Appalachian Mountain Range, from its southern terminus at Springer Mountain, Georgia, to the northern terminus at Katahdin, Maine.
Completed in 1937,  and commonly known as the “A.T.” it is a unit of the National Park System and is managed under a unique partnership between the public and private sectors led by the Appalachian Trail Conservancy, whose mission is to protect, manage, and advocate for the Appalachian National Scenic Trail.
While the main Appalachian Trail route is just under 2,200 miles, Upchurch said he chose to do a couple of “bonus routes” along the trail, making his actual trip about 2,300 miles on foot.

Training for a 2,300 mile hike
“I came up here (to the farm house in Clinton County), in the month of February.  I bought all of my stuff in Knoxville, and I would go back on the farm and I’d walk with that backpack on my back,” he said “I found out real quick that 30 pounds in a backpack is a lot.  The most I ever hiked back here was probably a couple of hours a day or maybe actually around an hour and a half was the most I hiked here a day.”
It didn’t take long for his Cartwright training to convince him that perhaps it was something he would be able to attack and finish.
“I did that four or five days, and I found out I wasn’t getting any blisters – sock liners – sock liners are huge, I didn’t get one blister on the trip,” Upchurch said pointing to his feet. “I did that for about three weeks and went to the trail.”

March 5, the Appalachian Trail challenge begins
“Around the first of April or the first day of spring, a lot of people were heading out – like a 100 would be signed up to be leaving that day,” Upchurch said.  “The day I left, there were like 20 of us.  I was with this group, and you see these people early on, we all kind of stayed together in the same area.  You would see each other and you could see how people were dealing with it.”
Upchurch said that one of the highlights of the trip was meeting other hikers along the trail and the fellowships with some that developed friendships. He says he will continue to remain in contact with them in the future.
“Probably about 300 miles in, I was pretty much on my own, and then I ran into a couple of guys – one from New Zealand and one from Kansas,” he said.
He added that he quickly adopted a system of getting up in the morning, eating a small amont of food, and get underway with the day’s hike.
For the most part, he said he would normally walk for about an hour, take his backpack off and rest for maybe 10 minutes, then get back underway.  As time went on, his hiking time advanced to 90 minutes, then to two hours between rest stops, except when the day included a lot of climbing and his walking time would normally go back to a hour at a time.
“You’d do that, and people would pass you when you were eating, then I’d pass them when they were eating,” he said. “So I ran into these two guys, and we kept seeing each other and so we started hiking together, and we hiked 700 miles together, from wherever we were to Harper’s Ferry (West Virginia) – I mean I haven’t talked to family members for 700 miles. That was a highlight of the trip.”
Upchurch said the New Zealand hiker was a big planner and would line up places for the trio to stay overnight, either in one of the “hostels” that are hosted all along the trail, or a spot to pitch a tent for the night or even in someone’s barn that was commonly used by Appalachian Trail hikers
“We’d stay in hostels, we stayed in a barn – it was a very nice barn, but it still had cracks in the wood (he said, making a gesture of measuring about an inch with his fingers).  I stayed in a lot of hostels, and I stayed in a lot of places I would have never stayed before,” Upchurch said.

Hot stuff coming through
As is the tradition for all Appalachian Trail hikers, he took on the nickname “Hot Stuff” early in the trail, and remained known as that by other hikers throughout.
In Georgia, he had met up with some fellow hikers and cris-crossed with their paths a few times.  Then he came upon them stopped and talking to another hiker who Upchurch described as looking like “he lived on the trail.”
“I’m not wanting to stop and talk to them because I’m still trying to figure out what I’m doing, and I’m trying to get around them., Upchurch remembered  “So, it’s a restaurant term – ‘hot stuff, coming through’ when you’re moving around on a cook line and carrying hot food.”
Upchurch said while some of the hikers had given themselves nicknames to be known by with other hikers, he hadn’t put much thought into it, adding that the real tradition is to somehow earn a nickname that is handed out by fellow hikers.
It was then, early in the hike, that Upchurch earned his trail nickname that would stick with him for the next several months.
“I get up to them, and they’re just kind of blocking the trail, and I just said ‘hot stuff, coming through’ and just as I went around, one of the guys (whose hiking nickname was Live Wire) just reached out and grabbed me by the arm and asked ‘do you have a name yet’, and I go ‘no’, and he says, ‘well, you do now, you’re Hot Stuff’, Upchurch remembered with a smile. “It’s a little presumptuous, going around calling yourself “Hot Stuff” I thought, but those young guys, they just wouldn’t let it go.”
His two newfound friends left the trail early, with the Kansas hiker leaving to attend his son’s state high school track meet and the New Zealand hiker leaving to travel to London to meet up with his fiancée.
“I really enjoyed hiking with those guys, but I was really also glad to get back on my own,” he said. “I would run into people and have social interactions and that was also available when I would get into a town or would camp at places.”
He also learned that for most of the remaining trip, he appreciated the solitude of hiking and camping by himself, away from the shelters and other hikers, just to make sure he would be able to get enough sleep and rest to get back on the trail the next day.
He also noted that he encountered hikers of all ages and backgrounds, adding that he saw some who were up in years and perhaps had waited too long in life to take on a challenge of this magnitude, adding that some maybe should have tried to complete the trail 10 or even 20 years before their 2024 attempt.
“Overall, the whole experience, you just run into a lot of good people,” he said. “ You get to hang out with those people, then you begin to start branching out as you get going.  I’m there to do one thing, and that’s to hike. You see some people who want to build fires and have parties, but I’m there to get through it.  I did not build one fire by myself, the whole time.”
He also mentioned meeting a gentleman who was 66 years oledand had hiked the trail first at age 61 and had plans to repeat the hike every five years in the future.
Another female hiker he met along the way was 83 years old, who during an earlier trip had held the distinction of becoming the oldest female to complete the challenge.  If she makes the entire trail this year, she will have become the oldest person of either sex to have ever completed hiking the Appalachian Trail.

Setting a pace was a learning curve
Upchurch said that he settled into the hike and began to set a pace, learning early on that his miles per day range would vary with the terrain difficulty that often changed from fields to trekking through portions of small communities then portions that were heavily vegetated and involved some difficult climbs.
Overall, he guessed that he had averaged somewhere in the 13 miles a day range, but in reality, his distance changed from day to day and week to week.
“The first week, I did 52 miles, and the second week I did 60 some and the third week I did in the 70s and the fourth week I was in the 80s or 90s and then I got over a 100 (miles per week) and kind of set at 100 miles a week,” Upchurch said.  “I would take off some, I would hike into a town, maybe after 10-12 miles, then relax that day and get some good food and then the next day just spend the day reprovisioning and just relax.”
Getting back on the trail after a day of rest or a day with a shorter mileage range, he quickly discovered that anything more than a day of rest actually made the next day more difficult.
“If I took two days off it seemed like it was harder, one full day off was about right for me,” Upchurch said. “I’d get back on the trail and my legs were still good.”

Hostels, hitchhiking, the people and traveling light
All along the Appalachian Trail, especially in the many small communities along the way, residents who have accustomed themselves to seeing hundreds of hikers moving through during the season have made a business out of providing food, shelter and essentials at their homes or small rental properties, known as “hostels.”
Upchurch said the people along the way were overly nice and he was treated well all along the route.
“You’d walk out of the woods and there would be a house, just like this, and there would be a couple in there running it, and they would have a washer and dryer there where you could do your laundry,” he said.
Being able to do laundry along the way at the overnight stops was an important opportunity he said, explaining that in order to cut down on weight, he traveled with just two of most everything – one article that he was wearing, and one packed away in the backpack, and a rain jacket he described as a puffy jacket he would wear when the weather became inclement along the way.
He explained that he spent a lot of time in the small communities along the trail, resting, looking at maps, meeting people and getting ready to continue.
While he said he never seriously considered giving up completely at any point, there was one stop about halfway through that the thought did cross his mind, adding that he was quickly able to convince himself to drudge on.
“ I was in Duncannon, Pennsylvania, and I’d had a long hike, probably had done 20 or 25 miles to get into Duncannon and it was not an easy hike.  I got in and they had a map on the wall, maybe 12 feet or more showing the whole Appalachian Trail and I’m standing there, and I’m looking at where I’m at,” he remembered.
It was then that Upchurch briefly had a thought that perhaps going forward might not happen.
“Ducannon is just a little bit over halfway, and I’m looking at how much further I’ve got to go, and that’s when I go ‘I don’t think I can do this, I just don’t think I can continue on,’” he said. “I stood there for probably a minute, it felt like it was longer, and it was just a voice, something in the back of my mind said ‘but look at how far you’ve come.’”
He said his thoughts then went back to Georgia, where it had all began, and all of the experiences he had gone through up to that point, and he just started looking at the map, beginning at Georgia and remembering the experience, and by the time he retraced back to Ducannon, he was in a more positive frame of mind.
“By the time I got back to Ducannon, I thought ‘yes, I think I can do it, if I got through all of that, I can get through it all,’” he recalled.
He also said that the trail crosses with roads and highways all along the route, and he was surprised at how easy it was to be able to get transportation for the stretches of the trail that involve those highways.
“Most of time you come out on the roads in the hollows, and it’s hard to get a ride because you can’t call anyone to come get you,” he remembered. “I did more hitchhiking than I’ve ever done in my life and I’m sure if I see a guy with a big backpack on, I’ll swing in and pick him up.”
He added that people giving him rides wouldn’t accept any money for offering those short lifts along the way.

Not all days were as pleasant as others
While most of the small communities along the route were pleasant stops for Upchurch, he said he bypassed many of the larger towns along the way.
For instance, the trail goes through Gatlinburg, Tennessee, a tourist and resort city in the Great Smokey Mountains.  After being advised that there weren’t many sites to see in that area, he opted to just cross the road and pretty much bypass the tourist locations.
He also added that the portion of the hike that goes through the Smokey Mountains wasn’t, to him, the best part of the trip.
“A lot of people go into Gatlinburg. . .  well, I’ve been to Gatlinburg and don’t ever need to go to Gatlinburg again, so I leave Fontanna Village (Tennessee) and cross the dam and go into the Smokey Mountains, and it’s cold and it’s windy.”
Upchurch said that the weather conditions along the trail, especially during the early spring part of his trip, made for some uncomfortable days and nights.
“On another day, it was cold, and they were having wind gusts of like 50 to 60 miles per hour, trees are snapping, limbs are breaking and flying across, and it’s cold,  the next day it’s raining and snowing sideways, and water has to come off of those mountains and hills and go somewhere, and it’s coming right onto the trails, and it’s that deep,” he said, raising his leg and holding his hand just below his knee.
Upchurch said one of the worst experiences he witnessed during his six month long hike came during that stretch of terrible weather conditions.
“I did about 15 miles that day because there wasn’t anything else to do except hike.  You would get soaked to the bone and everything you’ve got is soaked,” he said. “That night I got into a shelter, and there was a couple of young men, who had been day hiking, on the wrong day, and they were soaked to the bone.”
He remembered that eventually, some of the other people who were staying at the shelter became concerned enough about the two young men and their health that they called 9-1-1 and emergency crews came in at 4:00 a.m. that morning to put them in warm sleeping bags and then got them out at 8:00  a.m.
“The next day, I crossed this two lane road in the Smokey Mountains, into another woodland and it was almost like. . . the birds were singing, the sun was shining and everything was bright,” he said. “ It was a noticeable difference.”

There are dangers along the trail
Other than injuries from falls or missteps and problems from serious weather conditions, such as the one Upchurch mentioned earlier, he said he didn’t really encounter many problems along the trails, although he was aware that they could arise and heard of other hikers who did encounter problems.
“I didn’t take a gun, and there was never any reason that I would have ever used it,” Upchurch said.  “I did not see one bear – a lot of people did see bears, but I didn’t, did not see one rattlesnake or copperhead, but I did see black snakes.”
Upchurch did recall one instance along the trail that caused him some concern involving one of the many rivers he had to cross along the trail.
“The only other dangerous scenario I was really into was in crossing rivers up in Maine.,” Upchurch said. “One of the hurricanes came through, and it dumped a lot of rain up there, and I got swept up into a river.  I just rode it until I could reach up and grab ahold of a tree limb and pull myself out. “
He added that he did lose his cell phone in that encounter with the river, but was able to have it replaced in a matter of a few days after reaching out to an employee from the Florida business, who was able to get a phone to him three days later.
Surprisingly, he noted the cell phone communications were fairly good throughout the trip, saying that there were several areas with little to no reception, especially in the low lying points along the trail.
“Cell service was pretty good, actually, until you get into New Hampshire and Maine, and then it gets a little spotty,” Upchurch said.  “I had a group of people that I was texting, a group in Florida and a group here and others who I was giving updates to.”
He also said that another unpleasant experience along the trail came when he fell ill and was diagnosed with having contracted Lyme disease, an issue that he feels like began with a tick bite in Connecticut, but finally stopped him in his tracks in Manchester Center, Vermont.
“I never saw the tick that did it or have any rashes, but I was as weak as water and couldn’t hardly get out of bed for five days, it took me off the trail for 10 days to recuperate on the meds they gave me,” he said. “However, it was a blessing because the ball of my right foot had hurt for probably 400 miles and it gave it a chance to heal and the hike had become a job, I wasn’t really enjoying it like I had at the beginning and I was thrilled to get back on the trail when I was able to, the break really helped me.“
Upchurch completed the trail six months after that March 5 start, and was quick to say exactly how long his adventure had lasted.
I finished on August 21, right at 170 days, and that’s important to people that hike the trail,” he said.   “You can ask anyone who hiked the trail how many days it took them and I mean anybody, and they can tell you exactly.”
Although he came back with a large collection of photos made along the way, he stressed that the scenery isn’t really what hiking the Appalachian Trail is all about.
“It’s an endurance challenge is all it is,” he said. “There are some good views, but that’s not the main part of it… it’s a challenge.”

Hometown appreciation
Upchurch came back to his Cartwright community in February to train, after being away from Albany and Clinton County, except for short family visits, since graduating college in the late 1980s, and he noted how appreciative he was of his hometown roots and how the trip made him appreciate those who have chosen to live here and keep the community alive.
“I’ll tell you what, it struck me that the people who have kept this town running, and it’s not easy, all of the things that are going on, it’s not easy to keep a town up and operational,” he said. “You really notice it when you’re walking through all of these other towns, and every place has the same things, all the young people have moved away and you’ve go nobody to work in the businesses.  It’s national, but I have an appreciation for the people who have kept this town running.”

Time to go sailing
Upchurch said he isn’t going to give up his hobby of hiking trails, but will, going forward, limit it to day hikes, and talked of future recreational plans.
“I don’t think when I finished I should have just quit hiking, I think I should have kept walking a little bit along, because I think it kind of damaged me a little bit.  I finished on the 21st (August) and I’m just now feeling like I can get out and do some work.
“Actually, I’m going to be doing some sailing,” he said when asked if he planned to tackle the Appalachian Trail in the future.
He owns a sailboat, and had some work and repairs completed on it in Florida during what is the slower summer months for boat repair, hoping it would be ready by the time he completed his six month long journey.